Stachys germanicaL.

German hedgenettledowny woundworttrue woundwort

WFO wfo-0000314021 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Stachys germanica, photographed by Emanuele Santarelli
fig. a Emanuele Santarelli, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2021-06-16 / obs. 137044127

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Accession
K000928390
Filed as
Stachys germanica subsp. bithynica (Boiss.) R.Bhattacharjee
Det. by
Bhattacharjee, R.
Collected
Heldreich, T.H.H. 1845-08-01
Origin
TR
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 32 botanical countries

Regions where Stachys germanica is native: Canary Is., Morocco, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baleares, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Central European Russia, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sardegna, Sicilia, South European Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine MoroccoNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBelarusBelgiumBulgariaCentral European RussiaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PolandPortugalRomaniaSiciliaSouth European RussiaSpainSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Canary Is.BalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Stachys germanica, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baleares BAL
Belarus BLR
Belgium BGM
Bulgaria BUL
Central European Russia RUC
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
South European Russia RUS
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
North Caucasus NCS ASIA-TEMPERATE
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Canary Is. CNY AFRICA
Morocco MOR

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 130 in flower of 146 examined

Proportion of examined Stachys germanica in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 1 too few examined
Feb 0 0 too few examined
Mar 1 1 too few examined
Apr 14 16 88% 64% to 97%
May 30 36 83% 68% to 92%
Jun 48 49 98% 89% to 100%
Jul 32 35 91% 78% to 97%
Aug 4 6 67% 30% to 90%
Sep 1 1 too few examined
Oct 0 1 too few examined
Nov 0 0 too few examined
Dec 0 0 too few examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Stachys germanica observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 130 of 146 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,285 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.2 °C -3.5 °C 9.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 20.2 °C 24.4 °C 29.4 °C
Annual rainfall 562 mm 741 mm 1,228 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 19 mm 102 mm 229 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,285 research-grade observations of Stachys germanica that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 50 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Eriostomum germanicum (L.) Hoffmanns. & Link
  • Eriostomum lusitanicum Hoffmanns. & Link
  • Eriostomum polystachyum (Ten.) C.Presl
  • Leonurus germanica (L.) Gueldenst.
  • Stachys acutifolia Bory & Chaub.
  • Stachys alba Mill.
  • Stachys argentea Tausch
  • Stachys biennis Roth
  • Stachys castellana Willk.
  • Stachys cinerea Benth.
  • Stachys cordata Klokov
  • Stachys dasyanthes Raf.
  • Stachys dasyanthes var. alpina Heldr. & Sartori
  • Stachys elongata Benth.
  • Stachys excelsa Benth.
  • Stachys fuchsii Bubani
  • Stachys germanica subsp. cordata Greuter & Burdet
  • Stachys germanica subsp. cordigera Briq.
  • Stachys germanica subsp. lusitanica (Hoffmanns. & Link) Cout.
  • Stachys germanica subsp. penicillata (Heldr. & Sartori ex Boiss.) Nyman
  • Stachys germanica subsp. polystachya (Ten.) Arcang.
  • Stachys germanica var. alpigena K.Koch
  • Stachys germanica var. alpina (Heldr. & Sartori) Briq.
  • Stachys germanica var. banatica K.Koch

and 26 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.